Goal-oriented test data generation for programs with pointer variables

Automatic test data generation leads to identify input values on which a selected path or a selected branch is executed within a program (path-oriented vs goal-oriented methods). In both cases, several approaches based on constraint solving exist, but in the presence of pointer variables only path-oriented methods have been proposed. This paper extends an existing goal-oriented test data generation technique to deal with multi-level pointer variables. These pointers are responsible for the existence of difficult conditional aliasing problems that usually provoke the failure of the test data generation process. The key point of our approach is the definition of a new static single assignment form based on the results of an intraprocedural flow-sensitive points-to analysis. This form allows us to propose an overall approach for generating goal-oriented test data in the presence of pointer variables based on the Constraint Logic Programming framework. The approach has been implemented and tested over a few examples extracted from the literature